New centre to assist business with innovation

Statistics from the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development show that Canada lags behind
other G8 countries in productivity growth. In Timmins, a new centre
of excellence is being established to combat those figures by putting
Northern Ontario businesses ahead of the trend.

Now established at Northern College,
the Centre of Excellence for Productivity and Innovation will help
small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in northeastern Ontario
build productivity and innovation capacity.

The centre will be run by NEOnet.
Though the idea has been germinating since 2010, Northern College
president Fred Gibbons said it solidified after the city formulated
its Timmins 2020 strategic plan.

The plan asked whether a centre of
excellence could be created in Timmins that was unique from other
centres in the North.

The wo rk i n g group—which comprised
representatives of the Timmins Economic Development Corp., the
Chamber of Commerce, the Venture Centre, the Far Northeast Training
Board, the college, NEOnet, and MaJIC—settled on idea of proving
productivity and helping companies to innovate.

“A lot of the small and medium
enterprises don’t employ a lot of people, so consequently they
don’t have internal research and development capacity of their own
in the vast majority of instances,” Gibbons said. “So what this
project does is give them access to that to solve some of these
perplexing problems that they have.”

NEOnet was chosen to run the centre
because of its track record in developing information and
communications technology in Northern Ontario. Its mandate has been
to build broadband and cellular infrastructure so that residents of
small communities could benefit from education and health care
provided over the web so they don’t have to leave their homes to
get access to that information.

Chris McLaughlin, director of
operations for NEOnet, said the focus of the productivity and
innovation centre will be twofold: it will raise awareness about
productivity, as well as apply new technologies so businesses can
become more productive in their workplaces.

The focus will be on non-retail
enterprises such as manufacturing.

Ultimately, the goal is to generate
more revenue or more profits for Northern Ontario businesses so they
can be stronger, McLaughlin said.

“The program will be a two-tiered
system where SMEs can apply to have their business assessed with
respect to productivity, and they will be provided with a report on
their productivity level as well as some indication as to what they
can do to improve,” McLaughlin said.

“The second phase is that they can
take that report and apply to a program to receive some funds to
assist them in the implementation of the strategies.”

Reporting is built into the program so
that the centre can follow up on participating businesses’ success
after they graduate from the program.

For example, businesses could be asked
to fill out a survey six months after graduating and again one year
after completion.

That way, “we’re not just giving
them something and walking away,” McLaughlin said. “There’s an
investment made by the centre in the success of that business.”

Gibbons noted that the centre may
present research opportunities for students, all in keeping with the
college’s goal to provide them with experiential learning to make
them more marketable upon graduation.

It’s also in keeping with Northern’s
move in the last few years to foster more applied research projects.
“Productivity and innovation means helping companies to investigate
opportunities to solve some problems and some of that often draws in
research opportunities,” Gibbons said.

The organization is in the process of
hiring a coordinator for the centre and McLaughlin expects to have
someone in place by February. The project will roll out in early
March.